Composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was almost forgotten. Today, he's inspiring a new generation

Australia Broadcast Center

2 days ago

Late Victorian London wasn't an easy place to achieve musical success if you were mixed-race and born outside of marriage, like composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor.
Despite never setting foot in Africa, Coleridge-Taylor's music was often inspired by his African heritage, and he became one of Britain's foremost black composers.
"He was a composer who was really tapping into this idea of an African diaspora, which was pretty revolutionary for his time," says US-based harpist and music advocate Ashley Jackson.
A prolific composer and early champion of the equal rights movement, Coleridge-Taylor's lifetime coincided with the heyday of the British empire and a golden age for British composers.
His contemporaries, such as Edward Elgar, Ralph Vaughan Williams and Gustav Holst are household names for classical music lovers today.
In contrast, for decades Coleridge-Taylor was consigned to history. But thanks to the work and advocacy of diverse musicians, Coleridge-Taylor's music is now being shared with new audiences.
Coleridge-Taylor was born in 1875 to a working-class family in London. His mother named him after the 18th century poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
Despite never meeting his Sierra Leonian father, a medical student who lived in London for a time, Coleridge-Taylor's life was profoundly shaped by his African heritage.
His mother's family recognised and nurtured Coleridge-Taylor's musical talents. His grandfather taught him the violin and later, the family found a way to send him to the Royal College of Music aged 17.
Coleridge-Taylor initially learnt composition from respected British composer Charles Villier Stanford, who also taught Ralph Vaughan Williams.
Both composers wrote a substantial amount of music for choirs, orchestras and small chamber music ensembles.
Vaughan Williams's music, such as Fantasia On A Theme by Thomas Tallis and The Lark Ascending, are still extremely beloved by classical music lovers today, including Australian audiences.
But until recently, Coleridge-Taylor was only famous for one lone piece of music.
Coleridge-Taylor's most famous composition is a trilogy of cantatas called The Song of Hiawatha. Based on an 1855 poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, it follows a fictional Native American love story between Hiawatha, an Ojibwe warrior, and Minnehaha, a Decota woman who subsequently died during a famine.
The first cantata, Hiawatha's Wedding Feast, achieved critical acclaim in Britain and the US.
Stanford conducted the world premiere in 1898. The concert was attended by the who's who of British composers, including Hubert Parry, whose music has been used in British coronations since 1902, Arthur Sullivan of Gilbert and Sullivan fame, and Edward Elgar, whose high opinion established Coleridge-Taylor's name.
Hiawatha's Wedding Feast, written for choir and orchestra, opened doors for Coleridge-Taylor, who was asked to write the sequels The Death Of Minnehaha and Hiawatha's Departure.
Coleridge-Taylor conducted Hiawatha's Wedding Feast on three tours to the US in 1904, 1906 and 1910. On his first visit, Coleridge-Taylor was received by President Theodore Roosevelt at the White House, a reportedly rare opportunity for someone of African descent.
The music's popularity endured after his death.
"In the years between the world wars, the Hiawatha's festival in Royal Albert Hall in London was an extremely popular affair," says Andrew Ford, presenter of The Music Show.
"World War II in 1939 put a stop to the festival, but even in the 1970s I remember posters for performances in England," Ford says.
The score for Hiawatha's Wedding Feast sold hundreds of thousands of copies, and was said to rival the popularities of Handel's Messiah and Mendelssohn's Elijah.
But Coleridge-Taylor didn't receive much financial benefit from the sales. He sold the music outright for an immediate sum of 15 guineas, equivalent to over $26,525 in today's money.
Even though Coleridge-Taylor negotiated better deals for the subsequent cantatas, they weren't as commercially successful as Hiawatha's Wedding Feast.
When Coleridge-Taylor died at the age of 37 in financial strife, his case catalysed other musicians to establish royalty payments.
His musical talent and success didn't spare Coleridge-Taylor from the effects of racism during his lifetime.
Coleridge-Taylor's father returned to Africa without knowing his son's existance because of slim prospects to practise as a doctor in London.
Coleridge-Taylor's marriage to fellow musician Jessie Walmisley was initially opposed by her parents because he was mixed-race.
"[He] knew at first-hand both of discrimination by 'race', and of the shared objective by others of a more even playing field for all," says sociologist and writer Hilary Burrage, one of the directors of the Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Foundation.
"Victorian London was more varied of skin colour than some imagine."
Coleridge-Taylor attended the 1900 First Pan-African Conference, a landmark event for equal rights. He befriended African-American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, setting many of his poems to music.
He also incorporated influences from African diaspora into many of his compositions, including the 'Othello' Orchestral Suite, African Suite and Twenty-Four Negro Melodies which were inspired by African-American spirituals.
Coleridge-Taylor was reported to have said about the melodies:
"What Brahms has done for the Hungarian folk music, Dvořák for the Bohemian, and Grieg for the Norwegian, I have tried to do for these Negro Melodies."
One of the problems with forgotten classical music figures is that often, there are complex reasons for their neglect.
"In a way, the success of Hiawatha's Wedding Feast coupled with Coleridge-Taylor's early death contributed to the neglect of his music," Ford reflects. "His popularity might even lead people to not take him seriously."
Today, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor is better known for his instrumental music and songs.
In 2021, pianist Isata Kaneh-Mason, who also has Sierra Leonian heritage, included Coleridge-Taylor's arrangement of Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child in her album Summertime.
In 2022, London-based, ethnically-diverse orchestra Chineke! released a recording of Coleridge-Taylor's music, including his African Suite and Ballade In A Minor.
Harpist Ashley Jackson found Coleridge-Taylor's Twenty-Four Negro Melodies while working on her previous album Ennanga, inspired by African-American spirituals.
In her most recent album Take Me To The Water, Jackson included Deep River from the same set of melodies.
Coleridge-Taylor is often cited as an inspiration and role-model for diverse musicians alongside Florence Price, William Grant Still and others. His children, Hiawatha (Bryan) and Gwendalin (Avril) Coleridge-Taylor became composers and conductors in their own rights. It's a vindication for a composer who has been forgotten for decades.
But 150 years after Coleridge-Taylor's birth, some in the classical music world are still asking: does classical music have a diversity problem?
Jackson, who is an advocate for diversity and inclusion in classical music, says there's still a lot of work to do to honour the contributions of diverse musicians from past and present.
In a 2023 paper, Jackson cites historian Kira Thurman, who remarks:
Chineke! orchestra founder, Chi-chi Nwanoku, experiences this conundrum firsthand.
"This is the 21st century. It should not be a novelty when there is more than one black face on the stage," she told ABC Classic during the group's visit to Australia in 2022.
Jackson says rather than celebrating the milestones of being the first or the only musician of colour on stage, we should instead focus on diversifying voices of composers and performers in the music world. And one way to do this is by intentionally diversifying our musical choices.
"We have a responsibility to [feature] pieces of music that reflect the diversity of humanity," Jackson says.
This is how music's power to bring people together can be demonstrated, she says.